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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23206615">Resilience</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/earlybloomingparentheses/pseuds/earlybloomingparentheses'>earlybloomingparentheses</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Choking, M/M, Painplay, Post-Serum Steve Rogers, Rough Sex, Steve and Bucky love each other very much, Steve getting off on getting hurt, Steve has poor coping mechanisms, consensual hitting, implied aftercare</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-03-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-03-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 08:49:23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>966</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23206615</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/earlybloomingparentheses/pseuds/earlybloomingparentheses</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve can take a lot these days. Bucky loves him, so he gives him what he wants, even when it hurts. Well--especially when it hurts.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>45</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Fic Journal of the Plague Year</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Resilience</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Quick content warning--Steve asks Bucky to hit him in this fic, in the context of sex, and Bucky does. It's consensual, but for a normal person (i.e. one without super strength/healing) the intensity of the hitting and choking would not be safe and healthy. There's no blood, but there are bruises.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Steve can take it, he can take it all now. It’s just that there was a time when he couldn’t, when Bucky’s hand around his throat would’ve set off a coughing fit, when he had to bite his lip to keep from crying out when Bucky’s cock slid into him, no matter how lubed up he was with Vaseline or hair grease or cooking oil. Bucky knew, he knew Steve probably would’ve wanted it if he could’ve taken it back then, went looking for too many fights, too many punches and kicks and bloodied lips, for Bucky not to raise his eyebrows and wonder if Steve didn’t maybe get off on it a little. The kid was so goddamn frail, though, with his thin little chest and arms that stayed sticks no matter how many push-ups he did, and as reckless and stupid as Bucky was in those days, he wasn’t about to hurt Steve. Not even if Steve wanted it.</p><p>But now Steve’s big, so big it’s absurd, his fucking muscles, he looks like an action figure, a plastic army soldier, or like a porn star ripped on steroids. He’s taller than Bucky, which is some bullshit, and he got the not-fucked-up version of the serum so he’s got a hell of a lot more control over his body than Bucky does. Most importantly, he can heal. Fast.</p><p>“Hit me,” he gasps out, holding up his fists like he’s gonna block Bucky’s blow, but he isn’t, that’s the whole point. Steve’s cock is hard under his tight little gym shorts and he’s gleaming with sweat. So much sweat it looks fake. His lip is puffy—one of the only places tender enough for Bucky to easily leave a mark—and his eyes have that wild yet glassy shine Bucky remembers from coming across Steve in back alleys, four boys taking turns punching his lights out.</p><p>Of course it’s fucked up, not exactly that Steve gets hot from getting hurt, which is neither all that surprising nor all that kinky, but that Steve’s desire to get hurt sometimes overpowers his good sense. It’s one thing to like it rough, but it’s another to get into fistfights with men who have no interest in stopping when Steve’s body has had enough. These days, though—well, it takes a lot to get Steve’s body to that point. And Bucky’s gonna stop long before then, anyway.</p><p>He hits him. A punch, fist hard and arm loose, on Steve’s sweat-shined face. Steve gasps as Bucky’s knuckles connect with his skin and his head flies back like a cartoon. Red blooms up along the slope of Steve’s left cheek, under his eye.</p><p>“Is that all you got?” Steve asks, barely winded.</p><p>Bucky shoots out his metal hand and slams Steve back against the wall of the gym. He grasps Steve’s neck so hard Steve chokes, wheezing for air that doesn’t come. Steve’s eyes water and his hands slap back against the concrete. Bucky lets go. Broken blood vessels already: there will be bruises. For a few hours, anyway, till Steve’s skin heals itself and wipes away the evidence of Bucky’s violence. His windpipe, too, is as resilient as the rest of him; no need to worry it will swell after the fact. Bucky knees Steve in the crotch and Steve doubles over, breathing hard.</p><p>“Ah, fuck,” Steve gasps, hand cradling himself, “fuck, fuck.”</p><p>“You’re such a little shit,” Bucky growls, half playing, half dead serious, “you never did what was good for you,” and his cock never knows what to do, get hard because Steve is hard from Bucky hitting him or go soft because Steve is hard from Bucky hitting him? He twists Steve’s arm, pushing it to the point just before where the muscle might tear, pushing Steve up against the wall as tears spring up in his eyes.</p><p>“Oh god,” Steve breathes, clearly in pain, “oh god…”</p><p>Bucky uses his other hand, his human one, to feel between Steve’s legs. Steve winces—still tender—but fuck if he isn’t dripping through his little shorts.</p><p>“Gonna hold you here till you come,” Bucky growls, metal arm still wrenching Steve’s into a painful angle.</p><p>“Hit me, though, Buck, hit me—”</p><p>“Already hit you,” Bucky says, grasp like iron on Steve’s arm and on his cock.</p><p>“Again, again, please—”</p><p>Bucky grits his teeth and pulls back the hand on Steve’s cock and lands a punch right in Steve’s belly. All the air huffs out of Steve, an agonized grunt, and as he starts to double over the strain on his arm is too much; he cries out, a yell Bucky recognizes as meaning he’s had enough. Whether he thinks so or not.</p><p>He pushes his hand down Steve’s shorts and grabs onto his blood-hot cock. Steve whimpers. Bucky pulls him off, hard and fast. He guesses it must hurt a little. He grips tighter, so it hurts a little more.</p><p>Steve comes. Bucky lets his arm go and pins him to the wall as he spurts and shakes, purple rising on his bruised cheek, breath coming fast over his puffy lip. The noises Steve makes sound like pain. Maybe they are.</p><p>Finally, Steve thuds his head lightly back against the wall, rolling out his shoulder. He touches his belly, gingerly, and then his face.</p><p>“You got me good, Buck,” he says. “Phew.”</p><p><em>Phew</em>. What a loser.</p><p>“Gonna clean you up now,” says Bucky. “Put some fucking balm on those bruises.”</p><p>“Sure, Buck,” Steve says, a little sleepily. “Whatever you want.”</p><p>It is what Bucky wants, even if the wounds will heal by themselves soon enough. Maybe it’s old habit, but patching Steve up after a fight feels right to Bucky. Feels like his job.</p><p>It gets him a little hot, too.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>
  <i>This fic is part of the Journal of the Plague Year collection, which collects fics written during the coronavirus pandemic that include commentary about how the crisis affected the fic/writer.</i>
</p><p> </p><p>I wrote this a couple days ago when I was feeling particularly bad about the lockdown situation. It's voluntary in the U.S., but many places are closed and I'm working from home; I'm not going out unless it's really necessary. All I managed to do that day was lie in bed watching a grim Icelandic murder mystery and write some smut. Sometimes when I’m anxious I feel sort of self-sabotaging: like, I know I’m being mean to myself, when it would be better to be gentle, but it’s hard to shake it. There’s something about this particular situation that exacerbates that. I know that many people (both in and outside the U.S.) live with scarcity, precarity, illness, and fear every day; it’s hard for me not to think that many of us who have been more or less okay now just have to deal with what our overconsumption of resources and imperialist practices have inflicted on the rest of the world. And maybe…I don’t know, maybe it’s about time we found out what that’s like? It’s hard not to feel guilty, honestly—like, if you didn’t really believe some sort of crisis was coming for you, that was due to massive amounts of privilege! Like, it sucks, but also there’s a part of me that thinks—well, don’t people in my position sort of... deserve it?</p><p>No is the short answer, of course—no, no one “deserves” this; that’s a terrible thing to think. The solution for global inequity isn’t to make more people miserable and frightened. We need a redistribution of resources, not a pandemic that stretches our strained infrastructures even further. </p><p>Yet it’s one thing to think this and another to feel it. So I was lying in bed the other day, feeling mean and unhappy and psychologically self-destructive, and…it made a certain sense to write about Steve Rogers wanting to get beaten up. There’s a self-sabotaging streak in him; it’s not hard to read all those pre-serum fights as a way for him to punish his body for not being strong, healthy, and masculine enough. And then after the serum—well, he’s the ideal subject for a story about someone wanting something physically bad for them, because unlike people in real life, he’ll heal quickly and easily. Not that this level of self-punishment isn’t still fucked up. It’s okay to like getting hurt during sex, but this, I think, goes beyond that. Steve needs a therapist. But I was feeling particularly prone to indulging in my own guilt/anxiety/self-sabotaging thoughts that day (thanks coronavirus!!) so I just…wrote about someone getting off on getting beaten up. It felt good, in a sort of unhappy way, to translate my shitty mental state into fiction. My bad mood didn’t go away, but at least it was mitigated by arousal?</p><p>(Also, you can find me on  <a href="https://www.tumblr.com/blog/ebp-brain">tumblr</a>!)</p></blockquote></div></div>
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